Extraordinary Girl
by Fade131
Summary: He imagined the carefully dispassionate way the sannin would have described her progress, her training, perhaps even her final act of removing herself from his tutelage.  Originally posted 9.26.2008


**Author's Note: **Firstly, this was inspired by this picture: .us/image3892_file_**  
><strong>Secondly, when I originally posted this (on livejournal) I got some negative feedback regarding my word choice. I'm not trying to say that he believes she's perfect in any way - just that the memory he has of her is exactly what he wants it to be, and to add to it would be to mar it irrevocably.

**...**

**..  
><strong>

_He lacks the courage in his mind,  
>Like a child left behind,<br>Like a pet left in the rain._

The room was stacked with boxes, each one filled with files. They were piled six and seven high, leaning and tilting where the paper contents didn't provide enough support. Dozens of stacks had fallen already. The ground was littered with paperwork, report after report of missions failed and completed, medical files with chilling descriptions of autopsies, journals filled with horrific descriptions of experiments gone wrong, papers with 'Sannin no Orochimaru' written in flowing script across their bottom lines. The flood came up a foot off the ground, and kept its shape where it had been held back by the door. Itachi stared at it quietly, wondering how many of those files pertained to people he knew, or had known, or even were about himself or his brother, or Kisame, or...

There would be a file on _her_ here, somewhere. No, whole box. He could imagine it at the bottom of one of the perilous stacks, her name on the front in the Snake's careful handwriting - no, in his subordinate's spiked script, various samples of which were visible on the more recent papers. The files inside would mirror the chaos of the room, with little thought to their placement. There would be gaps in the time line, papers missing from their rushed removal from Konoha. He imagined the carefully dispassionate way the sannin would have described her progress, her training, perhaps even her final act of removing herself from his tutelage. Itachi thought of finding the files, of going through them, of keeping them for himself. But he had thought so before, and he had yet to look. He had yet to do more then stare at the wreckage, an impartial witness to the destruction of the so-called Otogakure.

Itachi considered quietly why he continued to return to this place, although it had been abandoned for weeks, untouched and undisturbed except for his own presence. There were no remnants of Sasuke here, almost as if the boy had never even been at all. When the residents of the Village had been ordered out, they had simply left anything that connected them to the previous regime. But the youngest Uchiha had left nothing. And unless he resolved himself to searching the forlorn mess before him, there was nothing of her, either.

He so desperately wanted there to be.

It was foolish, because she had never been here. She had never had a part of this place. And yet, in his mind he could not separate her from the idea of the Snake, and the reality of this place, and the sea of papers before him. Because she was in there somewhere. A little part of her, a little part of her life, trapped on paper. All he had to do was look.

And what if she _was_ there? What if he found her files and read them? Would they lay her out as the failed experiment? Would there be pictures of her? Would he see her through _his_ eyes, a tool to be used until no longer useful? What would the most recent file be? Would it account for the mark on her neck, the hole in her memories? Or would it be even more recent? Would the Snake, ever faithful to his experiments, have dug up her files and added their last encounter? Would it say in stark black that she had attempted Sōjasōsai no Jutsu? Even worse, what if those files contained all the emotions he'd always suspected Orochimaru of hiding? Would they speak of how proud he was of her? Of how special she was? Of his disappointment - or, Kami forbid, his satisfaction - when she saw the truth and left him? Had he been proud of her, in that moment?

He almost left it. He almost walked away again. But he knew that if he did, he would keep returning. And someday the temptation would be too great. Could he live with it if the view he had of her in his heart was changed? Would she still be the smiling, perfect senpai he remembered if he saw her through another's eyes?

The fire started slowly; he papers were damp from the rain that leaked through the ceiling, and even the small burst of chakra that started the blaze could not convince it to go higher quickly. Itachi walked slowly from the building, unconcerned by the slow-moving conflagration behind him that swept out to engulf the remains of all of Otogakure.

He looked back from the top of a hill nearby, his expression as impassive as it always had been. It was childish, to be afraid of words on a page; no one could ever make her any less than what she was, and in his childhood memories she was flawless. If he could keep nothing else of her, he could have that.

_She's an extraordinary girl_  
><em>An extraordinary girl<em>

The flames died when the rain came, leaving the Village a smoking ruin, but there was no one left to see.


End file.
